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The Department of Homeland Security plans to begin testing a DNA analyzer that’s small enough to be easily portable and fast enough to return results in less than an hour.

The analyzer, about the size of a laser printer, initially will be used to determine kinship among refugees and asylum seekers. It also could help establish whether foreigners giving children up for adoption are their parents or other relatives, and help combat child smuggling and human trafficking, said Christopher Miles, biometrics program manager in the DHS Office of Science and Technology.

Only DNA can positively determine family relationships, Miles said Wednesday during a conference on biometrics and national security.

Eventually, the analyzer also could be used to positively identify criminals, illegal immigrants, missing persons and mass casualty victims, he said.

The machine, known as a rapid DNA screener, is expected to cut days or weeks and hundreds of dollars off the per-use cost of DNA analysis.

Using a process called digital microfluidics, the analyzer processes a DNA sample and provides results in less than an hour for under $100 per sample, Miles said. By comparison, it takes days or weeks and about $500 per sample to get results when DNA is tested in a laboratory, he said.

“We’re not about advancing the technology so much as integrating and automating it into a fieldable device,” he said.

Boston-based NetBio, which developed the rapid DNA analyzer for DHS, described it as a “game-changing technology” platform that “consists of instruments, biochips and analytical software.” It eliminates the need for a trained technician and special operating site.

The analyzer was designed for Homeland Security, the military, intelligence and police agencies, the company says on its website.

As with other DNA tests, the process begins with a sample collected on a swab, typically from inside the mouth. The sample is placed in a disposable cartridge, and the analyzer does the rest of the work.

“It’s the same process that occurs in the lab today,” Miles said. But “it will drastically make the system more efficient.”

DHS’ Citizen and Immigration Services bureau is first in line to begin testing the new equipment this summer. A likely priority is testing people who claim to be family members in refugee camps overseas, Miles said.

That’s important because when a refugee is allowed to come to the United States, parents, children and some siblings also could be eligible to enter. Citizen and Immigration Services wants to make sure those who claim to be relatives actually are, he said.

Similarly, the agency wants to make sure children are who their guardians claim them to be. Usually, that sort of identity check might be done with fingerprints, but fingerprints of small children can be unreliable, Miles said.

On an average day, 400 refugees apply to enter the United States, 40 persons are granted asylum and 100 foreign-born children are adopted, according to DHS.

Although DNA analysis speeds identification of people, it raises concerns about privacy and civil liberties, Miles conceded. “We have privacy officers and civil rights and civil liberties officers who are working through all of those questions.”

As a precaution to protect privacy, the analyzer avoids sampling DNA that could identify genetic problems, Miles said. For years, privacy advocates have worried that DNA test results could be used to deny people employment, insurance or entry to the country.

But even the analysis DHS officials want to do could be problematic. DNA test results might reveal that a child is not related to the man thought to be his father. “Is it our role to tell them that?” Miles asked. In some societies, revealing such information could be dangerous to the child and its mother, he said.

Policy hasn’t developed as fast as technology when it comes to DNA analysis, Jim Harper, director of information studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Nextgov. “There are still a lot of unknowns. I’m not certain we know what all is being gathered when we examine DNA.” So far, there has been no comprehensive public discussion of what is being gathered, and how it should or shouldn’t be used has not occurred, he said.

The machines are expected to cost about $275,000 apiece, Miles said. “That sounds like a lot of money, but compare that to a laboratory full of equipment that would cost millions of dollars and a building that would cost tens of millions of dollars.”

After the rapid analyzers are in production, he added, the cost is likely to come down.

Federal employees and managers will be able to meet, interact, train and learn together in a government-only online virtual world being created in the vGov project.

The Agriculture and Homeland Security departments, Air Force and National Defense University iCollege have joined to create the vGov virtual world behind a secure firewall that can only be accessed by federal employees with authenticated identities.

Paulette Robinson, assistant dean for teaching, learning and technology at the iCollege, said at the Gov 2.0 Expo today the project will use the three-dimensional immersive experience of virtual worlds to bring employees together from locations worldwide for real-time interactions. People will use avatars to appear in the virtual world, where they can chat with other avatars and interact with the environment.

“Webinars are boring,” Robinson said. But in the online virtual world, “you feel like you are there and you have a sense that others are there.” It is difficult to describe the experience to those who have not tried it on public virtual worlds such as Second Life, she added.

The vGov virtual world environment is now being built and is expected to go online starting in July. It will be used for employee education, continuity of operations training, cybersecurity education and disaster response, Robinson said.

The entire vGov program will be structured behind a firewall, and participation will be limited to federal employees who have undergone an e-authentication process to verify their identity, she said.

The goal is to create a virtual work environment that includes enabling the three-dimensional visualization of data. “We are experimenting with a repository of knowledge management in 3D,” Robinson said.

Another possibility is offering cybersecurity training for employees in the virtual world, she added. Mandatory cybersecurity training for federal employees can be dense and tedious, while the virtual world offers a chance to make the training more of “an adventure” that is highly interactive, she said.

Source: Government Computer News

Your cellphone can already tell you where to find the nearest Starbucks or the most convenient subway station. But it might soon be smart enough to alert you to a toxic threat during your morning commute or coffee break, thanks to a new plan from the Department of Homeland Security.

The last time we heard about cellphones and terrorism, it was an appeal from the NYPD to shut off cell communication during an attack. Now, Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate want to use cellphones to detect the very threats that might be coordinated using wireless chit-chat. Their new program, called Cell-All, would embed inexpensive, chemical-sniffing microchips into cellular telephones. If a dangerous level of air-based toxin is detected, the phone would issue a warning ring (or vibration) to alert the owner and send a message to a centralized military monitoring station.

And, since the vast majority of Americans carry cellphones wherever they go, the program would use aggregated reports of toxin detection within a small area. If hundreds of cellphones in one location start flooding the alert system, the military knows they’ve got a serious threat to contend with. Detection, transmission and analysis would take around 60 seconds, according to a press release from the Directorate.

Given that terrorist attacks are usually launched in highly populated areas — subways, malls, office buildings — the idea of crowdsourcing the detection of  toxic terror threats makes a lot of sense, and using a built-in cellphone app would give the military the ability to detect threats in every corner of the country.

Except that, for now, the program’s manager is describing the initiative as “opt-in.”

“Privacy is as important as technology,” Stephen Dennis said. “After all, for Cell-All to succeed, people must be comfortable enough to turn it on in the first place.”

That’s good news for privacy zealots and conspiracy theorists, but bad news for the program’s potential effectiveness, given that crowdsourced intelligence depends on knowing that there’s a crowd to be sourced in the first place.

The Directorate is already in research-and-development talks with Apple, IG, Qualcomm and Samsung, and anticipate having 40 different cellphone prototypes within a year.

Source: Wired.com